Peru cracks down on illegal gold mining in Amazon reserve with military show of force
The skies above a rich corner of the Peruvian Amazon filled with smoke and debris this week as all branches of the country's military attacked illegal gold mining camps deep in the jungle.
Teams of soldiers on Tuesday stormed Tambopata National Park, a spot in the Peruvian Amazon in the southeastern Madre de Dios region visited by an average of 40,000 tourists per year. ABC News documented countless gold mining camps along the Tambopata river, which was home to a rich rainforest a few years prior.
The mining camps have become small villages or even towns, with fully functioning bars, makeshift restaurants and brothels accused of sex trafficking. The alleged miners were seen fleeing the scene as the military arrived, sprinting deeper into the Amazon and leaving behind women and a child.
Members of the military escorted the women and the child off the premises for questioning, all of whom were eventually released and taken back to the nearest town, Puerto Maldonado. The large-scale equipment, boats, campsites were lit ablaze or rigged with dynamite and detonated by the officials.
This military operation is a sequel. Dubbed Operation Mercury 2, this effort comes seven years after the first campaign proved to be temporarily effective, with a 90% drop in mining that eventually grew back to surpass previous numbers, according to the Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program (MAAP).
Gold mining has ravaged large parts of the Amazon that spans multiple countries, including Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia and Peru -- driven by the global rise in gold prices.
Since the first Operation Mercury in 2019, the price of gold has more than tripled globally, rising from an average of about $1,394 an ounce that year to roughly $4,395 an ounce today -- an increase of about 215%. The soaring price has made extracting even small amounts of gold increasingly lucrative.
Gold mining's environmental footprint has become enormous: by mid-2025, gold mining had destroyed nearly 344,000 acres of the Peruvian Amazon, according to MAAP, with 97.5% of that deforestation in Madre de Dios.
Mining has now spread across nine regions of the Peruvian Amazon and has been documented in 225 rivers and streams. While the mines themselves trample landscapes, the mercury used in the process is poisoning communities.
A 2021 study of communities in Madre de Dios found that 71% of people living within mining communities and 80% of people living outside mining communities had hair-mercury concentrations above the U.S. EPA reference level.
Researchers linked fish consumption to higher mercury levels. Several types of fish have been banned from consumption in the area given their mercury levels, but most fish markets do not abide by these laws.
"This week is just the beginning of Operation Mercury 2 to remove all illegal gold miners from within Tambopata National Park and build a robust, long-term muti-agency presence to prevent their return," said Ronal Ramón Flores Ñañez, provisional deputy supreme prosecutor, who accompanied the military on the operation.
Tambopata National Park is just one of six endangered national parks in Peru where illegal mining is destroying hundreds of square miles of federally protected areas -- many are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
This operation is being partly funded by Global Conservation, an international nature conservation group whose mission is the direct protection of endangered national parks and indigenous territories in developing countries.
"Illegal gold mining in national parks is crossing the Red Line for Peru's government," said Jeff Morgan, executive director of Global Conservation. "We are launching Operation Mercury 2 together to show the world Peru will no longer allow illegal mining in their national parks, polluting the rivers and water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people and wildlife; causing death and sickness for the next hundred years."
ABC News has partnered with Global Conservation to develop "Last Lands," a series that documents national parks around the world in need of aid.
